Teaching Psychology and Neuroscience with MATLAB

Study and research in psychology and neuroscience generate huge amounts of varied data. MATLAB enables educators to collect, import, analyze, and visualize such data; and draw further inferences through models and simulations.

Due to its ease of use and extensive capabilities, psychology and neuroscience departments often incorporate MATLAB into their curricula and lab work. Educators and researchers have created many resources and developed best practices for teaching computation that are available to colleagues to adopt and modify for use in future courses.

Neuroscience

Textbooks

• MATLAB for Brain and Cognitive Scientists
  
• Case Studies in Neural Data Analysis: A Guide for the Practicing Neuroscientist
• An Introductory Course in Computational Neuroscience
  
• Fundamentals of Computational Neuroscience, 2e
• Analyzing Neural Time Series Data: Theory and Practice

Online Training

• Solved challenges in neural time series analysis (Udemy)
• Dimension reduction and source separation in neuroscience (Udemy)

Example Curricula

• Mathematical Tools for Neural and Cognitive Science (New York University)
• Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience MATLAB course (University College London)
• Computational Cognitive Science (University of Edinburgh)

Teaching Toolboxes

• HHsim - a graphical Hodgkin-Huxley simulator
• DynaSim - a MATLAB toolbox for modeling and simulating dynamical systems

Teaching Kits

• BCI Teaching-Lab
• Backyard Brains

Psychology and Psychophysics

Textbooks

• MATLAB for Brain and Cognitive Scientists
  
• An Introduction to MATLAB for Behavioral Researchers
• MATLAB for Behavioral Scientists, 2e
• MATLAB for Psychologists
• Programming Behavioral Experiments with MATLAB and Psychtoolbox
• Psychophysics: A Practical Introduction, 2e

Example Curricula

• Introduction to Computing for Psychology (York University)